Tomic again makes 2+2 = 5

Greg Baum

IN THE necessary mythology of the advance of Bernard Tomic at the Australian Open, there had to be somewhere along the way a Daniel Brands. He would be a no-name 25-year-old German who failed to qualify for three of the four majors last year and languished at No.120 in the world; who, for billing's sake, would become an awkward draw and an important scalp, and who then would then be exposed by Tomic as, in fact, comprehensively deserving in his anonymity, and only barely worth our while.

Thursday's opponent came with this vanilla history, but proved to be anything but one of those home Brands. Tomic beat him, but in a match that like so many of Tomic's could be called typically atypical, and by a margin that is best described as comfortably uncomfortable, the more so on a day so blisteringly hot that Slovenian Blaz Kavcic, who beat the only other remaining Australian in an outside court five-setter, finished up on a saline drip.

For Tomic and Brands, it made for a meeting that in appearance was about as lusty as a hit-up. The lankiness of the combatants - both stand 196 centimetres - accentuated the effect; tall men always look more languid in their movements, and this day neither even was trying to rush. So it was that one woman in a pink shirt spent a good part of the match knitting, presumably not a sweater. Perhaps she was a mirage.

Tomic faced a break point against his serve early in the first set, won it, and did not face another. In seven official matches this year, he has lost his serve only once. But Brands' serve also ran molten hot. In one set, he did not lose a single point on serve until the tie-breaker. ''He was serving like Roddick,'' said Tomic. ''I thought Roddick had retired.''

Brands, by consensus, shaded Tomic in general play, won more points than him in aggregate and was one point away from forcing the match into a fifth set. ''Anything could have happened then,'' admitted Tomic, who suddenly seems older, wiser and worldlier. In the end, and not for the first time in Tomic's career, two plus two made five. But so do great players frequently do the math.

Brands had his best ever result last week in Doha, and in the first round here beat a seeded player. Tomic's scouting of him consisted of four blurry minutes on YouTube. ''The things I saw there were not the things I saw today,'' he admitted ruefully. Next to Tomic, he lacked nothing in stature; both had reason to eye spider cam suspiciously, as if they might become entangled in it.

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What Tomic saw across the net was another tall man who used his height well, especially when serving, whose groundstrokes were hard to read, who was apt to hit off-pace balls and who was not afraid to double bluff by hitting balls with nothing on them at all. What he saw, perhaps, was himself, sans Australian flag. Here was the trouble, and the intrigue.

The most common shot on the day was a winning serve. The next most common was a drop shot, sometimes to and fro. After the early, wary circling, the match became a study in big points. Brands held his nerve and serve to win the first set tie-breaker. But late in the second, he played one drop shot too many. Tomic, peeling away from his previous shot like a basketballer doubling back from a screen, ran it down and made a winner out of it. ''What a point it was,'' he remembered, fondly. ''It turned around the match.''

In the third set, Brands won every point on serve until the tie-breaker, then lost four of five service points, and suddenly trailed. Perhaps he tightened, perhaps he overheated; it was hard to say. But again at the end of the fourth set, he frayed without immediately snapping. Six times, he confronted match points and beat them away with crashing serves. But seven proved one too many. The warmth that rolled over him now was not merely north wind.

''I was surprised how well he played. He wasn't playing to his ranking; he played much better than that.'' The lesson, Tomic said, was never to take a supposed lesser opponent for granted, nor despair against one more decorated. So he began preparations for Saturday night.